Background: “Dignity Takings and Dispossession in Israel.” Law & Social Inquiry

❷ Jordan’s King: Just solution of the Palestinian cause brings regional stability
❸ Opinion/Analysis: The national Bureau: a new Nakbah may take place if Israel forces Bedouin communities to leave their lands
❹ POETRY by Tawfiq Zayyad
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❶ ISRAELI FORCES ORDER JORDAN VALLEY FARMERS OFF THEIR LAND Ma’an News Agency
Nov. 29, 2017 ― Israeli forces on Wednesday morning reportedly forced Palestinian farmers off lands they were working on in the Jordan Valley area of the Tubas district in the northern occupied West Bank, according to official Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned WAFA news agency.
___WAFA reported that Israeli forces ordered a group of Palestinian farmers near the village of Sakout to stop working and leave the lands immediately.
___While it remained unclear why the farmers were suddenly ordered off their land, the Jordan Valley forms a third of the occupied West Bank, with 88 percent of its land classified as Area C — under full Israeli military control. MORE . . .. . . . . ―❶ (ᴀ) HAMDALLAH: ISRAELI PLANS TO FORCIBLY TRANSFER BEDOUINS IN E1 ‘CROSS A RED LINE’Ma’an News Agency
Nov. 28, 2017 ― Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah released a statement on Monday expressing the government’s solidarity with the hundreds of Palestinian Bedouins in the community of Jabal al-Baba at risk of forcible displacement by the Israeli government.
___Earlier this month, Israeli forces distributed evacuation notices to all 300 Palestinian residents of the village in the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem, saying the residents had eight days to move to a “relocation site” designated for them by Israeli authorities.
___The village is populated by some 55 Bedouin families who have inhabited the area for 65 years — after being forced out of their original lands in 1948 when Israel was created — and face constant threat of being expelled from their homes.
___“As the Prime Minister of the State of Palestine, let me say clearly: we stand with our Palestinian citizens in Jabal al Baba, as well as with all of the other Palestinian communities across the West Bank that Israel seeks to displace in order to build illegal settlements in their place,” Hamdallah said. MORE . . . ..

Kedar, Alexandre (Sandy).“DIGNITY TAKINGS AND DISPOSSESSION IN ISRAEL.”
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, vol. 41, no. 4, Fall2016, pp. 866-887.
[. . . .] Dignity takings occur when the state confiscates more than property; such takings simultaneously deny the dispossessed their dignity. Dignity presumes that human beings are of equal value, and entails a respect for each person’s autonomy. As such, dignity takings deny these core values. . . .
___Dignity taking entails five major elements: (1) “A state directly or indirectly” takes property. (2) “Destroys or confiscates property.” Such dignity takings are often effectuated through brutal and unilateral state force. . . Atuahene emphasizes the function of property as personhood. Accordingly, when persons are displaced from their homes and properties, they suffer great emotional harm. . . . (3) “From owners or occupiers”. (4) “Whom it deems to be sub persons.” This includes dehumanization, “the failure to recognize an individual or group’s humanness”. It can also occur via infantilization, which is the “restriction of an individual or group’s autonomy based on the failure to recognize and respect their full capacity to reason” or treating them as if they were minors. (5) “Without paying just compensation or without a legitimate public purpose”. Atuahene clarifies that “just compensation” is not sufficient. If the landholder cannot reject the compensation offered and remain on the property, and the taking was not the result of a “legitimate public purpose” but part of a “larger strategy to dehumanize or infantilize” a specific group . . . this qualifies as a dignity taking.
[. . . .] To conclude, the concept of dignity takings, with some qualifications, adaptations, and transformations, can serve as an effective tool in analyzing the dispossession of Palestinians land in and by Israel. The concept highlights not only the material loss and harm done by these takings, but simultaneously the ways in which they inflicted devastating blows to the dignity and humanity of the dispossessed. Finally, the recognition that a certain taking or type of taking such as the Land Acquisition Law and Negev Bedouin cases constitute dignity taking should guide us in devising restitution processes that would restore not only the pecuniary value of the land, but also the taken dignity. Such restoration should recognize both past wrongs and present interests and impediments, while striving to design a healing future. SOURCE . . .

❷ JORDAN’S KING: JUST SOLUTION OF THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE BRINGS REGIONAL STABILITY Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Nov. 29, 2017 ― King of Jordan Abdullah II said on Tuesday evening that reaching a just and permanent solution of the Palestinian cause will lead to achieving security and stability in the entire region.
___King Abdullah, during a meeting in Washington with U.S. senators, called for reviving peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis based on a two-state solution and the resolutions of international community, leading to the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and living side by side with Israel. MORE . . . ..❸ OPINION/ANALYSIS: THE NATIONAL BUREAU: A NEW NAKBAH MAY TAKE PLACE IF ISRAEL FORCES BEDOUIN COMMUNITIES TO LEAVE THEIR LANDS Palestine News Network – PNN
Nov. 29, 2017 ― The National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements released the weekly report on settlements named Israel’s plans Ethnic Cleansing The Bedouin Communities Surrounding Jerusalem in which they wrote:
___“The deadline given by the occupation authorities to the citizens of the Jabal Al-Baba in the Eizariya town, Jerusalem, to leave their land, properties and homes ended last week. Thus, a new Nakbah (catastrophe) may take place should they succeed in implementing the plan, which means besieging the city of Jerusalem as a whole, and completely isolating it from its Palestinian surroundings.
___The Judaization, racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing policy that carried out by the occupation government against the Palestinian citizens in the East Jerusalem i.e. the Bedouin communities in Jabal-Baba, Arab-Jahalin and Abu-Nawar community to evacuate them requires the world countries. . . to intervene. . . ” MORE . . .

“HERE WE SHALL STAY,” BY TAWFIQ ZAYYAD
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shard of glass,
a cactus thorn,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.

We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants,
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.

Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.

—translated by Sharif Elmusa and Charles Doria
From poemhunter.com
Tawfiq Zyyad (7 May 1929 – 5 July 1994) was a Palestinian politician well known for his “poetry of protest”. Born in the Galilee, Zyyad studied literature in USSR. He was elected mayor of Nazareth, a victory that “surprised and alarmed” Israelis. Elected to the Knesset 1973, Zyyad was active in pressuring the Israeli government to change its policies towards Palestinians both in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. A report he co-authored. . . (More . . .)